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Western Hemisphere > Argentina

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Cover IMF Working Papers
Impacts of Labor Market Institutions and Demographic Factors on Labor Markets in Latin America
Adriana D. Kugler
This paper documents recent labor market performance in the Latin American region. The paper shows that unemployment, informality, and inequality have been falling over the past two decades, though still remain high. By contrast, productivity has remained stubbornly low. The paper, then, turns to the potential impacts of various labor market institutions, including employment protection legislation (EPL), minimum wages (MW), payroll taxes, unemployment insurance (UI) and collective bargaining, as well as the impacts of demographic changes on labor market performance. The paper relies on evidence from carefully conducted studies based on micro-data for countries in the region and for other countries with similar income levels to draw conclusions on the impact of labor market institutions and demographic factors on unemployment, informality, inequality and productivity. The decreases in unemployment and informality can be partly explained by the reduced strictness of EPL and payroll taxes, but also by the increased shares of more educated and older workers. By contrast, the fall in inequality starting in 2002 can be explained by a combination of binding MW throughout most of the region and, to a lesser extent, by the introduction of UI systems in some countries and the role of unions in countries with moderate unionization rates. Falling inequality can also be explained by the fall in the returns to skill associated with increased share of more educated and older workers.
Keywords:
WP; unemployment rate; Gini coefficient; collective bargaining; wage inequality; inequality in Latin America; reservation wage; labor market institutions; labor demographics; inequality; Latin America; worker-employer match; skilled worker; worker morale; Employment; Wages; Employment protection; Labor markets; Unemployment; Central America; Africa
Cover Staff Discussion Notes
Designing Labor Market Institutions in Emerging and Developing Economies: Evidence and Policy Options
Mr. Romain A Duval
and
Mr. Prakash Loungani
This paper discusses theoretical aspects and evidences related to designing labor market institutions in emerging market and developing economies. This note reviews the state of theory and evidence on the design of labor market institutions in a developing economy context and then reviews its consistency with actual labor market advice in a selected set of emerging and developing economies. The focus is mainly on three broad sets of institutions that matter for both workers’ protection and labor market efficiency: employment protection, unemployment insurance and social assistance, minimum wages and collective bargaining. Text mining techniques are used to identify IMF recommendations in these areas in Article IV Reports for 30 emerging and frontier economies over 2005–2016. This note has provided a critical review of the literature on the design of labor market institutions in emerging and developing market economies, and benchmarked the advice featured in IMF recommendations for 30 emerging market and frontier economies against the tentative conclusions from the literature.
Keywords:
SDN; collective bargaining; unemployment insurance; severance pay; developing economy; UI system; Labor Market Institutions; Employment Protection; Unemployment Benefits; Social Assistance; Cash Transfers; Minimum Wage; monopsony power; firm level; income group; Emerging and frontier financial markets; Minimum wages; Labor markets; Africa; risk pooling; wage inequality